


Pandora's Box

by dragonfeather



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Genre: Because the Canon Cave Scene Was Lame, Gen, Grey Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 17:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13323003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonfeather/pseuds/dragonfeather
Summary: When Rey visits the cave under the island, she has to face more than just a bit of narration and a lack of information about who her parents are. She has to face herself, and who she could have been or become if she gave in the Dark Side - and she has to understand the true nature of the Force better than she has up til then.





	Pandora's Box

Rey dragged herself up out of the freezing water, gasping for breath. She looked around, wary but curious, as she pulled herself over the rocky shelf and properly into the cave.   
  
"Hello," she tried, cautiously, but there was no answer. Not even an echo.  
  
It made sense to Rey that the ancient Jedi temple on the island would be balanced by a dark place here, under the island. She had expected - she wasn't even sure what she had expected. A test, or temptation maybe. The Dark Side manifesting somehow. But there was nothing; the cave was empty, slightly chilly but not even that cold.   
  
Indirect light filtered through from outside, although the cave walls looked wet enough that Rey thought it might be entirely flooded at high tide. Maybe that was the test, to get herself out before the tide drowned her. She looked around again, more carefully this time.  
  
The only entrance to the cave seemed to be the one she'd been swept in through, and the back of the cave was blocked by what looked like cloudy ice, reflective enough to act almost as a mirror. Rey glanced longingly at the sunlight which was just visible past the cave mouth, but the ocean was too unsettled to make it a good option. Rey knew how to swim, but she'd grown up on a desert planet where open water was rare. Swimming was not something she'd had much opportunity to practice, and trying to swim through the currents which had pulled her here from the sink-hole sounded like a great way to drown. She shivered again, and looked at the icy mirror at the back of the cave.  
  
Rey's reflection stared back at her, dark eyes wide and almost bruised-looking from lack of sleep. She stepped closer, hesitating for a second before she extended her fingers out to touch the surface. The sensation was of tingling, icy chills where the solid surface should have been. Rey snatched her hand back, but it was too late: the cave had vanished, hidden by an icy mist on all sides.   
  
"It's not real," said Rey softly to herself. "Not real. It's a test."  
But the darkness seemed to laugh at her, and the air in front of her - and behind her as well, clearly -shimmered into a reflective surface. It was like standing between two mirrors, reflections of herself extending forwards and backwards as far as she could see. Rey took a fighting stance, ready for whatever the Dark Side could throw at her, but all she saw was endless copies of herself take the same stance. It was more than a little unnerving.  
  
After a long few minutes of nothing, Rey took a wary step forward, and so did her reflections. Disconcerted, she stepped back again, again mimicked by endless copies.   
"Not endless," muttered Rey.  
She raised one hand and snapped her fingers, watching as the row of copies snapped their fingers in turn. There was a slight delay, almost as if the action was travelling in a wave away from her and back around towards her. It felt strangely isolating, standing on the wrong side of a mirror, trapped as one among a thousand splintering reflections, all slightly out of sync, all surrounded by darkness and silver mist and nothingness.  
  
 _Which one is the real Rey? Are any of them real?_  
  
Rey flinched. The thought was alien, like a voice whispering inside her head, soft and poisonous. The air felt heavy, suddenly, charged and humid like the moment before a storm breaks. Waiting.  
  
" _I'm_ real," said Rey slightly too loudly. "I'm the real one." She took a deep breath and tried to calm her emotions, consciously dismissing her fear and the spark of anger that threatened her stability. She could do this.  
  
 _Are you, though? How can you tell?_  
  
The voice was impossible to ignore. It was barely a sound, just a whisper, but this time she could actually hear it. The words fell into Rey's mind like ink into water, mocking her, daring her to respond again.   
  
_You're all alone. No friends, no allies, no family. You can't even convince a teacher to teach you, or a hero to save you. You have no roots, no name, no legacy, not like Kylo Ren. Not like Skywalker. Do you even know who you are?_  
  
Spinning around, Rey tried to see where the voice was coming from. Her endless reflections spun around with her, and she clenched her fists trying to ignore them. She felt it then, the hiss of power as the Dark Side opened under her like some sort of weird metaphysical eye.  
  
 _Do you **want** to know?_  
  
Silken, seductive, it offered her everything she wanted. Anything she wanted. The names of her parents. A home, somewhere to belong, to call her own. An empire, to bow before her and grant her the power to right every wrong in the galaxy, to make sure no more children had to grow up as slaves and scavengers. A family who would never leave her again, would love and cherish her. For a second, she understood the allure of the Dark Side; she felt how easy it would be to surrender to her fears, her passion for justice and the anger she felt at the world which made her fight so hard for everything she’d ever had.  
  
Slowly her reflections turned to face her, thousands of them in ranks of mirror images. They were dressed in the uniform of a general like Leia Organa, a great leader, and wearing the crown of the deposed galactic emperor. Rey glanced down and saw that she was wearing that same uniform, the proud colours of the Rebellion subtly combined with the standard of the old Galactic Republic. It was – glorious. Tempting. Awful.  
  
She shuddered, pulling her thoughts away from the idea. No power was that pure, no cause that noble, and she didn’t want an empire. Rey thought of the cold desert mornings on Jakku, full of the kind of pure serenity that she imagined the Force to be made of. Shutting her eyes, She looked for the Force the way Luke had shown her only that morning.   
  
There. Even in her own body, it was there, connecting all things. The heat of the sun on the island above her, on the ocean. The movement of living things, seeds germinating, animals moving and interacting. The soil itself was alive, a million tiny organisms working to break down the remains of death and decay and bring life again. Even in the stone of the cave, and the cold depths of the ocean there was the Force. It touched everything, singular and perfect and impossible.  
  
Rey opened her eyes.  
  
Her voice was even again, curious but calm as she asked, “Why am I here? What do you want to show me?”  
  
There was no answer. The hateful, whispering voice was silent. In the quiet, Rey could hear the soft sound of the sea, washing into the cave and out again. She could feel it, too – the tide was coming in, bringing a wealth of tiny organisms nearer to the reefs around the island. Fish followed them, soaring along the deep, cold currents, chasing one another through the icy water, and something a little like a seal chased them in turn. Sunlight and shadow, rippling in every direction, hunting or playing.  
  
Rey stepped forward, slowly walking through the multitude of reflections. Each one was different, now – one was dressed as a fighter pilot, while another wore storm-trooper armour like Finn’s, and a third was dressed as a desert scavenger from Jakku. Each time she stepped through a reflection, it gave her a jolt of memories or sensations like a tiny static shock. Rey walked faster and faster, until she was almost running – and then stopped.  
  
The last reflection was herself, just as she was, but with eyes as black as the night sky without stars, and a distinctly uncanny impression of sharp, jagged teeth and possibly claws or even tentacles. Something horrifying and dark, only just holding a veneer of humanity over itself. Holding a veneer of Rey over itself.  
  
The reflection smiled, sharp and mocking, and said, “You still don’t know who you are.”  
“I do,” said Rey, meeting its eyes.  
“If I went back instead of you, none of them would know the difference,” it taunted.  
“That doesn’t matter,” said Rey, aware for the first time that it really didn’t matter. She was herself.  
“Tell me, then,” it spat. “Tell me who you are, scavenger. Desert-rat nobody. Orphan. Tell me who you are, tell me your name.”  
“My name doesn’t matter. I would still be myself with or without a name.”  
“You sound like a Jedi, but you’re not one, are you? Not yet. Not ever, maybe.” Her reflection suddenly wore the face of Ben Solo, Kylo Ren.  
  
Kylo Ren, who was not her enemy – who was something much more complicated than that. Something like, maybe, the brother she’d never had, only gone wrong somewhere, twisted around and broken in a way that she didn’t quite understand even after seeing it first-hand. Even after seeing him cut down her hero, his own father, in cold blood.   
  
Rey took a deep, shaky breath, feeling the Force all around her, stabilising her with the deep, constant ebb and flow of the ocean and the tides. It wasn’t the peace of sunrise over the deserts of Jakku, or the precise, controlled clarity of flying a starship or fixing an engine. Those things were part of it, yes, but not the whole. There was also sorrow, and pain. Rage and fear and hunger, and joy. Beauty. Everything was in balance somehow, life and death, movement and stillness, dark and light in a single moment. As it should be. She understood, suddenly, why Luke had said the Jedi must end.   
  
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m not a Jedi.”  
“Of course I’m right,” hissed the black-eyed reflection, mirroring her face again rather than Kylo’s, grinning mirror-bright. “You’re nothing like your so-called heroes.”  
  
Rey ignored the words in favour of watching those black eyes. It was an anomaly; she could still feel the Force in everything, could almost see it connecting all life together. But it also connected her to this terrible, dark thing standing there wearing her face like a mask. It was like trying to look at the surface of the ocean while the Force made her aware of the currents and tides underneath it, balanced and necessary.   
  
Rey blinked. “You’re right, because you’re also the real me,” she said slowly, wonder in her voice. “Or part of me. We’re part of the same thing.”  
“You know nothing,” said her reflection, but its tone of voice was not so certain or vitriolic as before, and its expression was uneasy.  
Rey smiled at it. “You’re part of me. You need me, to be whole, just like.. I need you.”   
  
She held her hand out, then, offering it to her reflection, and she was not afraid. Not even when the black-eyed, sharp-toothed thing that was the Dark Side wearing her face stepped forward, all shadows and claws and teeth and pain. After all, it was _her_ face, and it was only her own pain it could give her. Her own anger and fear and heartbreak, and she’d lived through those already. She knew them just as well as she knew the sunrises on Jakku.  
  
Rey opened her eyes in the cave of the Sith, and smiled because she could still feel the Force moving through everything, singular and perfect and beautiful. Then she grinned.  
  
She knew why she’d needed to come here, why she’d needed to understand the secret of the Dark Side.   
  
Where the light side of the Force was peace and control, the Dark Side was passion and impulse. And it was terrible, and terrifying to look into the void and find out just how deep that well of passion and emotion was. But at the bottom of the box, under all of the fear and anger, the pain and sorrow and empty despair that threatened to unbalance Rey’s soul, there was one more thing. There was hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully the grey jedi hints came through. If not.. well, I'll try to do better next time. Either way, I _think_ this is less lame than the actual canon version of the scene.
> 
> Please be gentle, this is my first Star Wars fic.


End file.
